please return bloodbath to warrior

[Duelle]

it kills stance dancing entirely.

I'm going to indulge in something I rarely ever do.

As I've said in other threads, every class that has had stances in every game ever made had penalties for stance switching. It's meant to make you think of when to switch stances instead of doing it rotationally, or (as seen throughout HW) get an aggro lead and pretend you were a DPS.

Now, to show I'm not entirely heartless, I can suggest one way to get stance dancing back, but it would require removing every bonus from Deliverance and Defiance (no increase in max HP, no aggro bonuses, no crit bonuses), and instead have them alter the effects of individual skills (for example, Berserk behaving differently depending on which stance you use it in). You'd also need to do more combo juggling because your threat bonuses would come from a combo effect, which means that if you want to hold aggro you're going to keep that threat bonus active most if not all the time, combined with other passive mitigation effects from combos. And that would be on top of still managing the Inner Beast gauge for consumption on damage or mitigation skills.

[Gunnie]

You realize that this took 4 cooldowns to achieve right? And was only good for mass pulls? You didn't see this kind of thing in any sort of end-game content beyond 4-mans, and supposedly this game gets balanced around 8-man savage-tier content, not 4-man dungeons. This then begs the question; why the removal of Bloodbath? Why, on the sustain tank, did they remove sustain? And give them no other means of sustain to compensate for it?

I know how it works. I've played WAR in HW. And yes it was nice to pull this off. SE however doesn't want this, hense the change. Should BB ever make a return, I doubt it's going to end up the old way.

[Shurrikhan]

Bloodbath should have been a role skill for both tanks and dps.

I'd actually be fine with seeing it available natively to Warrior only, among tanks, and then to DPS by a different name.

Heck, in 1.2 Warrior used to heal for the full amount of every Crit, atop a larger crit buff from its stances.

What if I told you... that was the point?

As I've said in other threads, every class that has had stances in every game ever made had penalties for stance switching. It's meant to make you think of when to switch stances instead of doing it rotationally, or (as seen throughout HW) get an aggro lead and pretend you were a DPS.

Which would make sense as a change... if majority opinion wasn't towards the reduction of stance switch penalties, and the promise to raise the other two tanks towards WAR's level of fluidity and functionality, and explicitly not to nerf Warrior in kind.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

What if I told you that was the point?

Except that wasn't the point. Stance dancing is still very much a thing, it's just far more awkward.

[Duelle]

Except that wasn't the point. Stance dancing is still very much a thing, it's just far more awkward.

Inconveniences (or awkwardness) in design are a way of discouraging behavior. The devs can't use the more harsh alternatives (like, say, dungeon and boss mobs deal double-damage crits on every hit when you're not in Defiance) because that would require them reworking damage formulas across the board.

Which would make sense as a change if majority opinion wasn't towards the reduction of stance switch penalties

Maybe I'm misreading, but you're saying that because a good portion of WARs got used to having no penalties for stance switching, the entire design should now cater to that instead of aiming for something that's balanced and respects the inherent limits (not to mention the point) of stances.

[Quor]

Inconveniences (or awkwardness) in design are a way of discouraging behavior. The devs can't use the more harsh alternatives (like, say, dungeon and boss mobs deal double-damage crits on every hit when you're not in Defiance) because that would require them reworking damage formulas across the board.
Maybe I'm misreading, but you're saying that because a good portion of WARs got used to having no penalties for stance switching, the entire design should now cater to that instead of aiming for something that's balanced and respects the inherent limits (not to mention the point) of stances.

"Taking fun away is how you discourage behavior."

Well, you're not wrong. SE has done a really good job of discouraging WAR behavior. By which I mean "playing and enjoying the class." Not that I disagree with the premise of "swapping stances should incur a penalty" but rather I disagree with the implementation. The current state of Defiance/Deliverance is such that you're incentivized to change stance when at 0 gauge. This runs counter to the entirety of 3.0, where changing stance incurred a 10s CD on the stances and nothing else, meaning that you could, practically speaking, switch from tank to DPS or vice versa with ease, as long as you planned it right.

If they wanted to add some sort of penalty to stances, then they need to go about doing it in a way that doesn't gut the passive boosts of DnD or kill our ability to use skills (aka, "having fun"). I.e. they could make it so that, for the first 6s after changing stance, your skills generate no beast gauge. Or maybe the beast gauge cost for applicable skills is increased by 20 for the duration of the debuff. Something that doesn't penalize a player for playing optimally (maintaining high gauge in this case, for the stronger passive bonus) while at the same time *not* undermining the point of having stances. Solid tank design, at least in this game, rewards foresight and planning. WAR has typically met this standard. Proper use of IB was rewarded with increased tankiness at a key moment. Proper use of Bloodbath was rewarded with increased sustain during a high-damage situation. Proper usage of stance swapping was rewarded with meaningful contributions to overall raid functionality. The last two have now been either removed or gutted, as BB is no longer a thing for WAR's and stance swapping will optimally only occur at 0 gauge, forcing a WAR to maintain a certain stance to get the most out of their gauge, or else take a huge hit due to the demands of the fight.

I can speak only for myself when I say this, but I became a WAR because I wanted to tank, not to dps. Sure, Fell Cleave and Decimate and Deliverance are nice, but if they're going to sacrifice so much of our versatility and tankiness on the altar of "balance" then I'd rather they just ditch Deliverance and all that entails and instead transfer all that strength into more tank and utility power. I signed up to be a sustain meat tank. Let me be a sustain meat tank instead of trying to make me an ok dps and a capable tank and then failing at both to varying degrees.

[Shurrikhan]

Maybe I'm misreading, but you're saying that because a good portion of WARs got used to having no penalties for stance switching, the entire design should now cater to that instead of aiming for something that's balanced and respects the inherent limits (not to mention the point) of stances.

I'm saying that what I've seen here, on reddit, and as mentioned about player opinion in the liver letters themselves would indicate that TANKS, having played Warrior and at least one other tank, preferred the fluidity of Warrior's stance-swapping, whether otherwise enjoying opportunity cost or not, over that of PLD and DRK.

There can be plenty of thought involved in stance swapping without making each a sticky puddle of adhesive, costing a GCD and a chunk of mana to swap between.

[Duelle]

"Taking fun away is how you discourage behavior."

I have nothing against fun, as long as it stays within the rules and doesn't mess with anything else. Frankly speaking, if WAR shenanigans in 3.0 had had no effect on how people perceived PLD and DRK (nor jump-started the fixation on DPS), I wouldn't be here arguing in the name of balance.

If they wanted to add some sort of penalty to stances, then they need to go about doing it in a way that doesn't gut the passive boosts of DnD or kill our ability to use skills (aka, "having fun").

The passive boosts could and should be baked into the stances in full. Funny how they made the same mistake they made in 2.0 when Wrath stacks are what increased healing received rather than Defiance itself.

I can speak only for myself when I say this, but I became a WAR because I wanted to tank, not to dps. Sure, Fell Cleave and Decimate and Deliverance are nice, but if they're going to sacrifice so much of our versatility and tankiness on the altar of "balance" then I'd rather they just ditch Deliverance and all that entails and instead transfer all that strength into more tank and utility power. I signed up to be a sustain meat tank. Let me be a sustain meat tank instead of trying to make me an ok dps and a capable tank and then failing at both to varying degrees.

You don't need to ditch Deliverance, as at that point you're throwing away the gauge system for when you're not tanking. You'd be limited only to Butcher's Block with Storm's Eye thrown in every now and then.

What WAR players should consider is the fact that stances are supposed to work and be used a certain way, and they didn't during Heavensward. While everyone called PLD and DRK defective for having penalties on Oaths/Grit (resource cost, breaking combos, being on the GCD), WARs made out like bandits and everyone acted like they were the standard instead of the outlier that came about due to developer oversight. Best analogy I can come up with is that through a glitch in the system WAR was getting free lunch while PLD, DRK, and every tank that has ever had stances in every game ever made had to pay for their own. The glitch has been fixed, and now WAR has to pay for their lunch like everyone else.

[Shurrikhan]

What WAR players should consider is the fact that stances are supposed to work and be used a certain way, and they didn't during Heavensward.

They didn't during ARR either, though. They never have. Defiance and Shield Oath were used as little as possible.

[Launched]

While everyone called PLD and DRK defective for having penalties on Oaths/Grit (resource cost, breaking combos, being on the GCD), WARs made out like bandits and everyone acted like they were the standard instead of the outlier that came about due to developer oversight. Best analogy I can come up with is that through a glitch in the system WAR was getting free lunch while PLD, DRK, and every tank that has ever had stances in every game ever made had to pay for their own. The glitch has been fixed, and now WAR has to pay for their lunch like everyone else.

Except WAR did have penalties in both ARR and HW, they just weren't identical to PLD's/DRK's penalties. Defiance has the biggest damage loss, 25%. We're locked into stances for 10 seconds after swapping, unlike PLD who can swap either way with a gcd, or DRK who doesn't even need a gcd to drop out of Grit. Stance skills are also a much bigger thing on WAR: if you spent stacks on IB you missed out on a FC and vice versa. PLD and DRK don't have any mitigation skills locked behind a stance, WAR loses access to quite a few skills depending on stance (including Equilibrium, where the TP is useless in single target but you don't want to be in Defiance). Even back in ARR you would lose stacks if you didn't have 5 by the time you wanted to leave Defiance and you couldn't build any without the stance.

WAR had its own advantages and disadvantages for tank stance, too bad SE had to listen to the people that could only see the gcd requirements and make it even worse for WAR.